Monthly Archives: December 2007

…to all of our readers. We’re spending this New Year’s Eve the same way we’ve spent the last several, chaperoning a party hosted by one of our teenage daughters. Which leaves plenty of time to reflect on 2007, a year that couldn’t seem to get any respect but was, on the whole, pretty good, for us and for the world at large. As always, what makes this site worthwhile for »

That’s the title of a column by the AP’s Ron Fournier on the press conference that Mike Huckabee gave today. It was, by all accounts, a bizarre event. The purpose of the event was to play Huckabee’s new ad attacking Mitt Romney for reporters. Huckabee arrived late, giving the reporters plenty of time to peruse anti-Romney placards around the room, and announced that he had had a change of heart: »

Thomas Houlahan comments on Ms. Hillary’s recent discussions of events in Pakistan with Wolf Blitzer and George Stephanopoulos, addressing the question: “How credible is Hillary Clinton on Pakistan?” Houlahan writes: “If President Musharraf wishes to stand for election,” [Senator Clinton] told Blitzer, “then he should abide by the same rules that every other candidate will have to follow.” My immediate reaction was: “Did I hear that correctly?” As a Pakistan »

A mostly-forgotten figure from the past, Sara Jane Moore, was released from a federal prison in California today. Moore attempted to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975. She says now that she regrets her crime, and that she was “blinded by her radical political views.” As one who locates the Ford administration in the recent past, I was a bit shocked to learn that Moore is 77 years old. Still »

Top-notch trial lawyers (and even lawyers like me who have tried some cases before juries) recognize the centrality to the trial dynamic of jury empowerment. The typical juror arrives at the courthouse on the first day apprehensive about the process and wondering whether he or she has what it takes to be a good juror. But once jurors are selected and begin to feel at ease, it usually dawns on »

Yesterday, I wrote: “The bad-faith liberals are the ones saying nice things about Mike Huckabee.” As if on cue, E.J. Dionne says some nice things about Mike Huckabee. He does so by way of flogging his pet idea that class warfare (he calls it populism) is making a comeback, as shown by the popularity of Huckabee and John Edwards in Iowa. But Dionne cites no evidence that us-against-them rhetoric ever »

Glenn Reynolds links to the New York Times story on the putative independent presidential candidacy of Mayor Michael Bloomberg with the tag “a nanny on horseback.” The Times article provides a preview of the high-minded themes and gasbags that would be associated with his candidacy: Former Senator David L. Boren of Oklahoma, who organized the {Bloomberg planning] session with former Senator Sam Nunn, a Democrat of Georgia, suggested in an »

A number of intelligence sources say that lower and mid-level officers in Pakistan’s army and air force were involved in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto: Benazir Bhutto was assassinated on orders of lower- and middle-level officers of the Pakistani army and air force, according to various intelligence sources, including members of India’s counterintelligence service. According to a source who asked to remain unnamed, members of the Pakistani armed forces involved »

Britain’s Channel 4 News has acquired video footage of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination that appears to establish that Ms. Bhutto was shot before the suicide bomber exploded his device. You can see the footage in Channel 4’s report below. The gunman and the bomber are both visible; they approach Bhutto’s vehicle while she is standing up, waving to the crowd from the sun roof of her vehicle. The gunman fires three »

Many observers commented on Time magazine’s foolishness in overlooking General David Petraeus when it awarded its “Person of the Year” honor a week ago. But London’s Telegraph was not so myopic: Today, we put him in the spotlight again by naming Gen Petraeus as The Sunday Telegraph’s Person of the Year, a new annual accolade to recognise outstanding individual achievement. He has been the man behind the US troop surge »

Ever since Hall of Fame coach Joe Gibbs returned to take charge of the Washington Redskins four seasons ago, I’ve been saying he would succeed eventually. Until four weeks ago. That’s when the Redskins lost at home 17-16 to the sorry Buffalo Bills. The loss was the team’s fourth straight — all close games — and it dropped the Redskins record to 5-7. Worst of all, Buffalo won on a »

I like Rudy Giuliani as a presidential candidate, and he’s definitely my wife’s favorite. For quite a while he led the national polls, and maybe he still does. But the extent to which Rudy has been absent from the battle, and the news, in recent weeks is weird. This headline sums it up: Giuliani Steers Clear of Political Fray. I’m not sure that’s the path to nomination. Giuliani’s campaign insists »

We have already noted MIke Huckabee’s apparently incorrect claim that John Bolton has agreed to work with him on foreign policy issues. Now it seems that Huckabee also misstated his relationship with a second conservative foreign policy expert, Richard Allen. Huckabee included Allen, a former national security adviser, in the list of analysts with whom he has spoken. But Allen told The Politico that, although an intermediary asked him to »

We wrote here about Glen Johnson, the reporter for the Associated Press who has been assigned to cover Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. Johnson makes no secret of the fact that the detests Romney, and his articles on the candidate have been a succession of hit pieces. His most recent, this morning, is titled Analysis: Romney and Candor. Johnson’s thesis is that Romney has a “candor gap,” which is a nice »

Pakistan today rejected offers of assistance in investigating the murder of Benazir Bhutto. That strikes me as entirely appropriate. Hillary Clinton, as I noted yesterday, committed an appalling faux pas in saying that “there is no reason to trust the Pakistani government.” If Clinton were President, this would be a major diplomatic blunder. Pakistan’s government says it intercepted a call from an al Qaeda chieftain that proves al Qaeda was »

Robert Novak reports on a massive telephone survey of 15,000 Iowans who say they will attend the Republican caucuses. (If true, that would be a substantial percentage of all Republicans who will participate.) In this survey, Mitt Romney is back in front of Mike Huckabee, whose support appears to be slipping. Bob Dole, Novak reports, has entered the fray with an open letter to Huckabee criticizing him for his attack »